by JP Delaney
“But if there was no link…” I say.
Dr. Latham holds up a finger. “Except for one thing. Something so tenuous and circumstantial, it could never be used in court.”
She hands me a book. I recognize it instantly as the one Patrick gave me. Les Fleurs du Mal, translated by Patrick Fogler.
“Page fifty-six,” she says. “Read it aloud, would you?”
Mystified, I do as she asks.
ME
The girl lies naked, sensuously sprawled,
Her limbs spread wide to curious eyes;
Her secret places shamelessly exposed,
A glimpse of pink between her amber thighs.
Only a crimson swathe of blood,
Encircling the severed head,
Reveals that she is perfect now,
As all are perfect who are dead.
I stop short. I understand now why she asked me to read this particular poem. Encircling the severed head…I hear a click and look up. Dr. Latham is flashing more images onto the screen—horrible, horrible images, so grotesque I have to look away. But not before one in particular has seared itself into my brain. A woman’s head, severed, posed among thick church candles. She’s still wearing her big hoop earrings. Her eyes are partially closed: You can see her green eye shadow. The expression on her face is glassy and resigned.
“Please, go on,” Dr. Latham says calmly.
Reluctantly, I lift the book and continue.
ME
Tell me, cold beauty, did your intimate in death—
Whose lusts you could not, living, sate—
On your inert, voluptuous corpse
His monstrous passions consummate?
No matter where that man goes now,
He cannot hope to hide or flee,
For he has tasted death’s sweet fruit,
And loves for all eternity.
I stop, my throat dry. “It doesn’t prove it was him, though, does it? It doesn’t prove it was Patrick.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Latham agrees blandly. “It proves nothing.”
“And Stella? Was she…Was her death like this?”
“We’ll come to that. But shortly before she died, Patrick met someone in a bar—a young woman. When she picked up his book, she turned down the page to mark his place. Do you remember?”
I nod.
“Would you find the place now, please?”
I do. The poem Patrick Fogler was staring at so intently that night was called “The Murderer’s Wine.”
My wife is dead. I am free.
Now I can slake my heart’s desire.
“When you go back into Patrick’s past,” Dr. Latham’s saying, “you discover that, wherever he’s living, young prostitutes disappear. Not many; just one or two a year. Not enough to make the headlines—because who cares about a few crack whores, right? But enough to make a pattern. The bodies are rarely found. But when they are, they’ve been mutilated, in ways that reflect different poems from Les Fleurs du Mal.” She flashes more pictures up. Awful, haunting pictures. “Shanice Williams. She’d been stabbed seven times in the heart. That corresponds to a poem called ‘To a Madonna,’ in which Baudelaire says, ‘I will take seven knives, one for each deadly sin, and plunge them in your panting, sobbing heart.’ Jada Floyd. Her breasts had been sliced open. That corresponds to a poem in which Baudelaire describes how ‘some men like to bite and kiss the sucked-out breasts of anorexic whores, extracting every drop of bliss, as if they sucked an orange of its juice…’ Stop me if you’ve heard enough.”
“I’ve heard enough.”
But Dr. Latham doesn’t stop. Another photo, then another. “Jasmine Dixon, whose stomach was slashed open in a way reminiscent of the poem ‘A Carcass.’ Imani Anderson, whose head had been brutally shaved, like a poem in which Baudelaire compares his mistress’s locks to ‘the black ocean of burning Africa.’ Precious Coleman, stabbed through the spleen. Annie Washington, ditto—Baudelaire wrote several poems with the title, ‘Spleen.’ And these are just the victims we found, remember.” She clicks her remote, and the screen goes mercifully dark. “Then, after Patrick’s marriage to Stella four years ago, the murders stop.”
“Why would that be?” I ask, as much to distract myself from what I’ve just seen as anything else.
“Perhaps he was trying to be good. Perhaps he was in love. Or perhaps he just got better at hiding the corpses. Either way, the absence of killings, coinciding with a major event in Fogler’s life, is one more slender thread tying him to the series.” She leans forward, her eyes bright with fervor. “This is about much more than catching Stella Fogler’s killer, Claire. This is about nailing a sociopath. That’s why I say it’s dangerous.”
“What will I have to do, exactly?”
“I don’t know—not exactly. I can only tell you who you have to be.”
“An improvisation.” I feel my pulse quicken.
“Yes—except that in this play, the dead bodies won’t get up and take a bow when it’s over. Please understand, Claire: You’re going to have to trust me more than you’ve trusted any director or acting coach you’ve ever worked with. Frankly, I still have serious reservations about going ahead.”
“But this might still all be coincidence. Patrick might be innocent.” I’m still struggling to reconcile Dr. Latham’s terrible pictures with the amused, intelligent academic I met in that bar.
“Yes. In fact, we have to approach the operation at all times as if he is. It’s the only way we’ll stay objective.” She looks at me steadily. “But let me tell you this. I’ve been working on these killings for over six years—long before Stella’s murder. And for most of that time I’ve been convinced that Patrick Fogler is by far the most credible suspect.”
20
After a sleepless night of terrors and doubts, I’m back in Dr. Latham’s office. I sit at her desk, working through more papers. She stands over me, watching.
Consent forms. Dozens of them.
Personal injury disclaimers. Surveillance permissions. Confidentiality agreements. Privacy waivers. And forms about the forms. Forms that say I understood what I was doing when I signed those other forms. Forms that say I gave my agreement freely and in the almost certain knowledge that working undercover could screw up my life, my career, and my mental health.
I sign them quickly, barely reading them, initialing each page and dating where requested.
“Welcome to boot camp, soldier. Now your ass is mine,” Dr. Latham growls.
It’s the worst Denzel Washington impression I’ve ever heard, but effective. I don’t manage a smile.
* * *
—
Training continues in another conference room, deep in the bowels of the building.
“Let’s take a look at some monsters,” Dr. Latham says calmly. She clicks a button on a remote and the house lights dim.
She paces back and forth as she speaks, obscuring the face now on the screen.
“This is Peter Kürten. Otherwise known as the Beast of Düsseldorf. His wife told the police psychologist their sex life had been completely normal. Kürten, on the other hand, told the shrink he’d fantasized about strangling his wife every single time they made love. She’d never had any idea what he was really thinking. These next slides are some of Kürten’s victims, just as he left them.”
When I can bear to look again, there’s a different face up there.
“Béla Kiss, who preserved his victims in empty gas drums…Hans van Zon—like many serial killers, he was superficially charming, good-looking, and extremely charismatic. Among other victims, he killed his own girlfriend and had sex with her corpse. Again, she’d apparently never had any idea what was really going on inside his head.”
On and on it goes, a sickening roll call of evil.
“I’m not telling you all this just to spook you, Claire,” Dr. Latham says mildly. “As a result of studying these people, we know a lot about how a sociopath’s mind works. We can look at the way he leaves a murder scene, for example, and make deductions about his personality, his intelligence, his relationships, even what kind of car he drives.” She holds up a bulging folder. “This is everything we know about the man who murdered those prostitutes. I warn you, it doesn’t make easy reading. But you need to study it carefully. Your life may depend on it.”
“This is what they call a psychological profile?” I ask as I take it from her.
“That’s part of it, yes. And there are more photographs, case histories, excerpts from textbooks…Our job is a bit like bomb disposal. Before you start pulling at the wires, you’d damn well better know which one leads to the explosive.”
“If he’s guilty.”
She looks at me steadily. “We haven’t told you how Stella Fogler died yet, have we?”
I shake my head. “But I remember the housekeeper who found her saying it was brutal.”
“The police have been keeping the full details from the media, to weed out false confessions.” Dr. Latham pauses. “And, frankly, because they didn’t want to cause alarm.”
She reaches for the copy of Les Fleurs du Mal and hands it to me. “Page eighty-two.”
The poem on that page is titled “To One Who Is Too Cheerful.”
“Aloud, if you don’t mind. Just the last three verses.”
Even though there’s no need, I try to read it properly, doing justice to the rhythm. But as the meaning of what I’m reading sinks in, I can’t keep it up. By the time I get to the end, my voice is dry and flat.
ME
How I should like, one quiet night,
When the hour for pleasure nears,
To creep like a thief
Toward the treasures of your flesh.
To strike and whip your joyous limbs
And bruise your yielding breasts;
To slice, quick and sudden, down your flank
A gaping, bloody wound,
And—dizzying sweetness!—
Through those new lips,
So bright and glistening,
Infuse my venom, oh my sister!
“It was a blow from a lamp that killed Stella,” Dr. Latham says matter-of-factly. She flashes up more photographs. I recognize Stella’s hotel suite. On the bed is a body. Bruises blossom up the bare legs. Then, abruptly, one of the photographs zooms in and there’s Stella’s face, surrounded by a dark halo of blood, soaking the sheet underneath. Instinctively, I recoil.
“The debris on the floor is consistent with some kind of struggle,” Dr. Latham’s saying. “That, along with the missing money, was enough to make the NYPD treat it as a robbery gone wrong, initially. But right from the start, there were certain details that didn’t quite fit. The body was left covered by a sheet, for one thing. Robbers who have just killed someone don’t do that—they get the hell out of there, as quickly as possible.”
“Who does?” I say. “Do that, I mean? And why?”
Dr. Latham shrugs. “It could be a gesture of reverence. Respect, even. A final goodbye. Or it could just be someone who didn’t like seeing Stella’s lifeless eyes staring up at them reproachfully.” She clicks the remote and the image changes to a close-up of Stella’s leg, a bloody gash several inches long. “More significantly still, there was a deep cut on her right thigh, probably inflicted postmortem with a broken wineglass—just like the wound described in the poem, although of course the cops weren’t aware of that at the time.”
She clicks again. “In any case, it seemed unusual enough that they ordered swabs. It was fortunate they did, as it gave us the most important piece of evidence so far. Analysis revealed that the interior of the wound bore traces of nonoxynol-9, a lubricant found on common brands of condom.” She pauses. “There was a condom machine in the men’s bathroom at the bar where you met Patrick. You’ve told us, and your video confirmed, that Patrick asked the barman for change, just before you tried to pick him up.”
Her words pour over me—macabre, horrific, sickening. I stare at the book in my hand. The poem, its poisonous words laid out as innocuously as the verse in some sappy greeting card. And then the photographs on the screen, the horrible implication in Dr. Latham’s explanation. The terrible desecration Stella’s killer perpetrated on her corpse.
It wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. He wasn’t like that, a voice inside my head insists. I liked him. He was nice, for chrissake.
Actors are trained to trust our instincts. Often, they’re all we have. But then I realize the point of Dr. Latham’s little lesson just now. Like many serial killers, he was superficially charming…With people like this, she’s telling me, instincts may be wrong.
“But—why?” I manage to say. “Stella wasn’t a prostitute like the others. Why kill her at all?”
“We don’t know. Perhaps she’d found out about the other women. Perhaps he realized she was leaving him and he wasn’t prepared to let that happen. Or perhaps he just couldn’t contain himself any longer.”
I think again of the words Stella spoke to me.
STELLA
I thought maybe I could get something on him. Something to stop him coming after me…
If she suspected her husband was a killer, no wonder she’d been terrified. Had she even expected him to be violent with me? Was she half hoping that was what my hidden camera would capture? I thought I’d simply been testing her husband’s fidelity, but was it a darker, more desperate game Stella Fogler was playing that night?
“The fact that Stella’s death breaks the pattern makes her particularly interesting,” Dr. Latham’s saying. “Where the other killings bear the hallmarks of careful planning, this one seems hurried—spontaneous, even. That could be a sign of overconfidence. Or it could be an indication he was under pressure in some way.” She clicks her remote, and the screen goes blank. “Either way, it’s good news. It means he’s starting to make mistakes.”
21
Patrick Fogler knocks on the door of the Terrace Suite.
“Who is it?” Stella Fogler calls cautiously.
“Room service.”
“I didn’t order anything.”
There’s no reply. Impatiently, Stella goes to the door and pulls it open. “You have the wrong—”
But Patrick has already pushed his way in. “Hello, darling. Waiting for someone?”
“Patrick, please. This isn’t what it seems—”
Fogler throws a bag onto the floor. It makes an ominous, heavy noise. He looks over at Dr. Latham. “Do I hit her now?”
“Probably. You’d want to establish control of the situation.”
Frank Durban nods. Back in character, he empties the bag onto the floor. A tangled snake-coil of metal chains, handcuffs, and strips of cloth for gags tumbles out.
“I’d scream,” I object.
“Not necessarily. However much people tell themselves they’d resist in these situations, the reality is that victims are often paralyzed by a combination of indecision and disbelief. Plus, if Patrick has hit you, you’ll be in shock. He’ll use that interval to get the restraints in place.”
Frank mimes hitting me across the face, then twists me around and snaps a cuff onto my wrist. His hand on my arm is heavy, implacable. I feel the masculine strength of him and yelp.
“Sorry,” he says, easing up.
“No cuffs,” Dr. Latham says. “They’d have shown up on the autopsy. Let’s run the scene again. Without the cuffs, this time.”
* * *
—
At a nearby restaurant, we discuss sex murders over the dish of the day.
“Get this straight, Claire. Our killer isn’t a sadomas
ochist in the modern sense of the word. But it’s likely he chooses to hide among practitioners of BDSM, because he shares certain of their interests. Where they use bondage as a shortcut to sexual pleasure, he uses it as a shortcut to the things he’s interested in: humiliation, degradation, control. The power of life and death over another human being.”
The waiter comes over to top up our water. He smiles at me. Dr. Latham, oblivious, goes on talking.
“BDSM is very interesting, actually. Why is it suddenly becoming so mainstream? It used to be thought a fetish for being caned was a result of corporal punishment in childhood—le vice anglais. But strangely enough, it’s the Spock generation, the ones who were never smacked as kids, who’ve grown up wanting to experiment with bondage and domination.”
The waiter, fascinated, can’t tear himself away.
“One possibility is that deviance is simply the flip side of libertarianism. Once you get people thinking they have a right to pursue their own happiness at the expense of social norms, you end up with a small but growing number at the margins who don’t see why they shouldn’t indulge their darkest, most predatory instincts too. Our killer may actually see himself as some kind of romantic antihero. Rather than as a sick, twisted individual who needs to be stopped.”
* * *
—
Afternoon session. Dr. Latham, Frank Durban, and I each stand in front of a whiteboard.
“Okay,” Dr. Latham says. “I’m the killer. Frank, you take Fogler.” She tosses a marker to Frank, who writes FOGLER on his board, just as she’s written KILLER on hers.
“What do I do?” I ask.
“Nothing, yet. But if we both write the same word—in other words, if there’s an overlap—then you put it on your board too.”